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Inflation has not spiked, and the value of the dollar has not collapsed. At this point, in fact, there are more worries about deflation than inflation.

But thanks to the tea party influence in the GOP — in particular the Fed-bashing Rand and Ron Paul wing of the party — ripping the Fed and the bigger role it is playing in the economy has become more a litmus test for party loyalty, regardless of whether the dire predictions have come true.

“Republicans think it sells,” said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied Congress’s relationship with the Fed. “They want to be on the right side of those movements that are coursing through the Republican Party at the real grass-roots level.”

Even the small handful of Republicans who say they will support Yellen, the Fed’s current vice chairwoman, have made it clear they are doing so despite their strong opposition to the central bank’s current stimulus program, known as quantitative easing, and that they hope as chairwoman she would quickly scale it back, despite Yellen’s public comments to the contrary.

“The market is totally dependent on QE like an addict is dependent on the drug supply,” said Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), who supported Yellen’s nomination in a Banking Committee vote, saying that while he is opposed the Fed’s stimulus policies she “has the intellect and experience” to lead the central bank.

Democrats and Fed supporters have eagerly pointed out that Republican predictions of what the Fed’s bond-buying programs will bring have not come true, with the annual inflation rate standing at 1 percent in October and should be dismissed.

“Among some of the most critical Republicans, let me say politely that they are not exactly data-driven people,” said Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and now a senior fellow at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “So while they may raise the issue of, say, inflationary pressures, they’re not really looking at the numbers, certainly not the way [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke or Yellen are.”

Republicans remain undeterred, seeing little evidence of a political backlash to beating up on the Fed, and they have a ready answer when questioned on why their gloomy predictions have not materialized: Just wait.

“There’s going to be a day of reckoning,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.).

Shelby and others argue that the trouble will start once the Fed tries to unwind the more than $3.6 trillion balance sheet it has built up in recent years by buying assets, such as Treasury and mortgage bonds, to keep long-term interest rates low to spur on spending and investment. Fed officials say they are confident they can manage, first, the easing back of its monthly asset purchases and then shrinking the portfolio without incident. Their attempt to do so will be closely watched.

“With regards to taxpayers and inflation, I think there is a potential and a breaking point — if I knew this I’d be as rich as Warren Buffett — but there’s a breaking point for when they can’t control interest rates,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in an interview.

Yellen and her Fed colleagues agree with their critics that the central bank can’t continue buying big batches of Treasury and mortgage bonds indefinitely but argue that when to stop should be based on economic conditions — and, with unemployment high and inflation low, now is not the time to hit the brakes.

Whether the off-and-on bond buying program can achieve much more on its own after five years is a question that continues to face the Fed, and Bernanke and other officials argue that fiscal policy emanating from Congress would be a more effective way to target problems in the economy.

Even as Republicans continue to strongly warn about inflation and a devaluing of the dollar, they have also started to make other arguments for why the Fed’s policies are doing more harm than good. Each argument has an appealing populist flavor.

A popular attack over the past year is that by keeping interest rates low, the Fed has enabled the growth in deficits and the overall debt because government borrowing is cheap, so there is no pressure to cut spending.